


Things We Lost In The Fire

by anastiel



Series: Supernatural Codas [17]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Future Fic, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Mentioned Canonical Character Death, Platonic Cuddling, Season/Series 15, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22358884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anastiel/pseuds/anastiel
Summary: “It’s a milk run,” was what Dean had said, three days ago in the middle of the Bunker’s kitchen, halfway through a beer with a purple-yellow bruise blooming on his cheekbone.He’d said that about the last one too, and the one before that.They don’t have milk runs anymore, but if it’s easier for Dean to think of this new monster-controlled world that way, Sam’ll let him.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Supernatural Codas [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/160976
Comments: 13
Kudos: 60





	Things We Lost In The Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the future Chuck showed Sam in 15x09.
> 
> Warnings for graphic depictions of corpses and platonic bed-sharing + non-sexual physical intimacy between Sam and Dean if that isn't your thing. Unbeta'd because we die like men.

_Do you know how it ends? Do you feel lucky? Do you want to go home now?  
_ _There’s a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of the Chevy and a dead man at our feet_ _staring up at us like we’re something interesting._ _This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard,_ _and make a wish._

_“Wishbone” - Richard Siken_

**_September 2, 2021_ **

“It’s a milk run,” was what Dean had said, three days ago in the middle of the Bunker’s kitchen, halfway through a beer with a purple-yellow bruise blooming on his cheekbone.

He’d said that about the last one too, and the one before that. 

They don’t have milk runs anymore, but if it’s easier for Dean to think of this new monster-controlled world that way, Sam’ll let him. 

“You’re not all the way healed,” Sam had pointed out, gesturing at the werewolf scratch zigzagging down Dean’s forearm just barely starting to scab.

Dean had taken another swig of beer, swallowing thick against the liquid and shrugged, “I’ll live.”

Even as he packed his bags in the minutes that followed, Sam wondered if they actually would.

* * *

Sam can’t stop smelling copper -- metallic and fresh -- filling every inch of the air around him. His shoulder stings, and he feels the thrum of his pulse from the wound blooming there. Blood covers his knuckles, drying like plaster on his hands, and staining his nails like worn nail polish. 

Behind him, distantly, as if at the other end of a tunnel he hears Dean panting, the swish of a blade, an animalistic screech, and the sounds of a blade going through flesh. There’s a thud as a head hits the ground followed by a heavy sigh from Dean. 

“Sammy, you alright?”

Sam looks down at the body less than a foot from him, a human. There’s a crisscrossed line of slashes on her stomach, blood pooling around her waist, rolling down the slanted dirt, and touching the tip of Sam’s shoes. Nine others, all dead too, are scattered about the barn, bodies in various states of dismemberment. 

He couldn’t save them, not a single one. Just like he couldn’t save Cas, Eileen, Donna, Claire —

“Fine.”

He sucks in a deep breath and it comes back out a stuttered gasp. Distantly, he hears Dean’s footsteps near and needs him closer, to help bring back him from the precipice. 

“Sam,” Dean says, quiet and tired, next to him now, his hand on Sam’s good shoulder, bringing him back to himself. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“We can’t --” his voice falters, chokes on a sob.“We can’t just leave them.”

“I know, but we can’t dig ten graves,” Dean’s voice is softer, speaking to Sam like he’s a spooked horse. 

Sam stares down Jane Doe, the part of her mouth open in a scream. “We need to do _something.”_

Dean curses under his breath and Sam hears him angrily kick a rock against the wood wall of the barn. “I’ll grab some salt, gas, and matches from the trunk.”

They don’t have time or resources for pyres, so Sam moves the bodies the best he can, lines them up side-by-side in the middle of the barn -- six adults and four kids.

He cries while he does, tears making the dried blood on his cheek run bright crimson down his neck and into his shirt. The vamps didn’t even try to turn them, just murdered them, as viciously as they could. 

Dean finds him minutes later, kneeling by the youngest child, a little girl with bows in her pigtails, white dress stained pink from the gash over her heart. He’s trying to fix her hair, place it just so on her shoulders so she looks a little less worse for wear, but his hands keep shaking and he can’t get it right. 

“Sam.” Dean’s voice breaks through his thoughts, but he can’t stop looking at her. She couldn’t have been more than five. 

“Sammy,” Dean says again, grabs his shaking hand and holds it tight in his fist. “Look at me.”

Sam does, through the tears in his eyelashes and finds matching ones in Dean’s. 

“Let’s say goodbye, and then we’ll go,” Dean says. 

A box of matches is pressed into his hand, replacing where Dean’s hand was. Dean pats his cheek and helps him to his feet. He stands, on numb limbs, and watches while Dean paces back and forth around the line of bodies, dumping a mix of salt and gasoline over them. 

“Thank you,” Sam murmurs, voice sounding strange and foreign in his own mouth.

Dean nods, curt, and when he looks up at Sam, there’s an aching sort of sadness contained in his eyes. 

They’ve lost so much and they just keep losing more. How much heartbreak does it take to kill?

Sam strikes the match and it lights, he holds it up, watching it burn until the stick is almost gone, flames licking at his fingertips. He tosses it to the center of the line and steps back as gas takes to flame and bursts. 

He doesn’t know what to say to these people he never got the chance to know but who deserved more than an end like this. “I hope you’re somewhere better,” he says and hopes with all of his heart that somewhere better still exists.

They stay until the flames start to dwindle. Sam finds when he tries to walk away, that his feet have turned to leaden weights, unable to shift from their spot. Dean, forever Sam’s rock, slips an arm around Sam’s back and half-carries him back to the car. 

“We did what we could,” he says, trying to reassure him, but it only makes Sam feel worse.

Sam wishes they could have done more, wishes they hadn’t had to do anything at all.

* * *

“When do we stop?” Dean asks, later, in the car headed eighty miles an hour, going as fast as he can away from whatever form of hell that was. He’s headed east, towards dark nothingness and empty land. 

“We can’t. There’s too many of them now if we stop more people will die,” Sam says. But it feels like he’s reciting words off of a script, ones that have been ingrained in him since childhood. 

Maybe if they keep trying they’ll find atonement for those they’ve lost.

“We don’t even save people anymore.” Dean smacks his hand on the wheel, anger rising like a tornado on the horizon. “They all die or get turned, no matter what we do. Is it even fucking worth it?”

Sam sniffles and swipes his fist under his eyes. “I don’t know, Dean. I don’t know.”

One day it will be just them, driving through ghost towns and endlessly running in circles killing monsters until they go down swinging. It’s no way to live, but Sam forgot what living felt like months ago. He’s not sure if he ever really knew what it meant to begin with. 

They go silent for a while. Dean doesn’t even bother turning on a cassette tape. Distant lights flicker into view, bright orange that turn into flames as they get closer. A small farming town, lit on fire, black smoke billowing up in puffy clouds above the prairie. There’s not a building spared. Monsters, no doubt, they’ve become quite the pyromaniacs at the end of the world. Sam grimaces and turns his face away from the window, looks at Dean’s profile instead, but still feels the lingering heat of the flames on his cheeks miles down the highway.

“I’m gonna stop for a bit,” Dean says, after an hour or so of silence.

“Why?”

“You’re hurt and we need a break.”

“Where are we gonna go?” Sam asks. They’re back in the middle of fucking nowhere, there’s lights straight ahead but it could be a distant farm. He can count the number of functioning monster-less towns on one hand. 

“Think there’s another city coming up, hopefully this one ain’t on fire.”

Maybe Dean’s right, maybe he’s not. Does it even matter? “Whatever you want, Dean.”

Dean gives him a side-glance and worries his lip between his teeth. “Kay.”

Five minutes later, Dean passes signage for Dawson Springs, Kentucky: A VERY SPECIAL PLACE WELCOMES YOU. The billboard hangs sideways on its stilts, some of the letters faded from the weather. He turns exits the highway onto a bumpy off-ramp. The podunk town is immediately to the left of the highway, shadowed in darkness, no lights indicating any semblance of life. 

The Impala’s headlights illuminate store windows, ghastly empty from looters. An old diner sits at the first corner, a closed sign hangs in the window, and the front door flaps open in the slight breeze. Every visible surface is clean, the tables are empty; someone even stole the condiments. 

“Damn,” Dean mutters, “I was at least hoping for a burger; been so long since I had a good burger.”

Sam, albeit his normal refusal of red meat, misses it now and grunts his agreement. 

Dean continues down the main street and finds a run-down motel near the edge of town limits, lights out, like the rest of the buildings, and sunflower yellow paint visibly cracking in the headlights glow. 

It’s not much, but there are a few doors that don’t look busted in, so maybe it’s not completely destroyed yet. 

“Whataya think?” Dean asks, shooting Sam a look. 

Sam shrugs. A bed is a bed nowadays, he’ll take anything. “You’re the one who wanted to stop.”

Dean rolls his eyes and huffs, annoyed at Sam’s shit. Sam’s annoyed at himself too. He swings the Impala round the back, parks near to one of the closed doors hiding the car from view of the road or highway and cuts the lights the moment he shifts into park. 

“Home sweet home!” Dean says, sarcasm dripping from his voice as he brandishes his hands towards the eerily dark motel room in front of them.

Sam scoffs and doesn’t move. The driver’s door squeaks open and slams shut. He hears the trunk open, two thumps -- his bag and Dean’s -- another squeak as his own door is opened. Yep, there’s Dean squinting down at him, worry etched into every line on his face. 

“Sam,” he says, gentle and offers him a half-smile, a firm pat on the arm. “C’mon, let’s go inside.”

* * *

There’s one bed, a king, easily big enough for the two of them. It’s not preferred, but they take what they can get. Even so, tonight it comforts him knowing Dean will be so close, to keep him from running away, running out into the night and letting this growing bloodlust turn him into someone he doesn’t know. 

While Dean salts the entrances, Sam sits on the edge of the bed, kicks off his shoes and stares at his reflection in the half-broken mirror above the sink. His neck is stained red, shirt even worse and his shoulder aches from his untreated wound. He can barely feel it though, everything in him numb. Ten ghosts flash behind his eyelids every time he closes his eyes and somehow that hurts more than any wound could. 

“Sam, lemme patch you up and then we can sleep, yeah?”

Sam blinks up at Dean, now standing in front of him, clean sleep pants and a t-shirt in his hands. He shakes his head when Sam doesn’t answer and sets them next to Sam on the bed, waiting while Sam shrugs his shirt off and tosses it into the trashcan near the door. 

The lights don’t work and even if they did Dean wouldn’t turn them on, too obvious if monsters come scouting out the town for any sign of life. He uses his phone flashlight while he cleans Sam’s wound. 

They don’t talk. Dean hands him a bottle of whiskey and Sam drinks instead, wincing when Dean takes it back and pours some of it on the gash. 

“I’m gonna see if the faucet works, you wanna brush your teeth?” Dean asks once he’s done and satisfied that Sam looks better, less like a dead man walking and half-clean in new clothes and a patched up shoulder. 

Sam shakes his head and crawls under the covers instead, turning over on his good side towards the bathroom. It’s comforting somehow, watching Dean complete his nightly routine, a constant that even in this new world hasn’t changed. 

His brother though has changed. Sam sees the burden of all they’ve been through in Dean: in his silhouette as he brushes his teeth, the tired slant in his shoulders, the dark bags under his eyes, how he prays to Cas buried deep in the Ma’lak box every night when he thinks Sam is asleep. He tries to hide it, but it comes out in bursts of anger, and how he kills; rough, overzealous. 

They’ve held eleven hunter funerals this year, built eleven pyres and those are just the friends whose bodies they found.

Sam stares at the wall and tries to not let the empty hole in his chest consume him. 

An indiscernible time later the bed dips and Dean slips in next to him, tugging at the sheets, sighing and shifting until he’s comfortable. He feels worlds away, but even so, the bed is warmer just by his presence. Dean has that effect, always able to bring Sam back from the darkness, even when he too is suffering. 

“I don’t want to stop hunting,” Sam admits in the empty air between them. “Sometimes I think that’s the only thing keeping me going.”

“I get it, I do,” Dean says. There is a pause and Sam hears him shifting in the bed, the mattress creaking and sheets shuffling. “I just... don’t know how much longer I can go on. Doesn’t seem worth it anymore, after Cas, Eileen, you know?”

 _Please don’t give up,_ Sam thinks, _you’re all I have._

Sam nods, feels tears prick at the back of his eyes. “You ever wonder... if they’d still be here if we hadn’t...” he trails off, thinks of an angry dark mark on Cas’ skin, black lines trailing up his arms and into the blue of his eyes. 

He remembers Dean taking the Impala and Cas, a Ma’lak box trailing behind. He came back two days later without Cas, and with a bloody fist and eyes more bloodshot than Sam had ever seen. 

The months before Cas went crazy and before Eileen died. He wasn’t happy but he was close, and so was Dean. Fate was never kind to them, it was too much to hope they’d be allowed a taste of happiness before it was taken away. 

“Every day,” Dean answers, voice choked with emotion. “Every damn day.”

There’s nothing more to say, so Sam shifts, trying to get comfortable on his side, bunching the pillow up under his head. He lets his eyes slip shut and tries to think happy thoughts to drown out the flashes of the dead. Sleep won’t come easy tonight if it does at all. 

“You asleep?” Dean whispers, sometime later, when it’s evident that they’re both struggling to find slumber.

Sam sighs. “No.”

Dean huffs and Sam hears the bed creak and dip as Dean moves. “You remember what I used to do when we were kids and you couldn’t sleep?”

“Played twenty questions?”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, I mean when that didn’t work or you’d woken up from a nightmare.”

Sam thinks, his memories passing by in flashes of motel rooms eerily similar to this one. Until Dean was old enough to take out on hunts, they shared a bed, usually huddled close together under thin sheets to keep out the cold. When things got rough and Dad was gone for days on end, even weeks, Sam tended to have nightmares. On those nights Dean would hold him, tiny arms wrapped around Sam’s waist, whispering his own made-up stories about the constellations until Sam finally fell asleep.

“You’d hold me until I fell asleep,” Sam says, finally.

“Mhmm.”

Sam hums thoughtfully and it sounds like a confused question, which Dean answers for him.

“We walked into a nightmare today and the past few months have been hell, and I’m just... thinking that maybe we both need this.”

Dean has always taken care of him, in every way he could, kept him holding on even when it seemed like there was no way out. Always kept him safe. Maybe now, they can keep each other from drowning.

“Just like when we were little?” Sam asks, in a quiet voice. 

“Just like when we were little.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, smiling a little, thinking about how happy he’d been as a kid to wake up and see Dean there. Even if Dad was gone, Dean was always there. “Okay.”

“Okay.” 

The bed squeaks as Dean scoots closer and notches one of his knees behind Sam’s. He doesn’t reach out, so Sam reaches behind himself and fumbles for Dean’s hand in the dark, pulling it towards him, and Dean follows. He guides one of Dean’s arms around him and the other follows. He covers his hands atop Dean’s forearms and releases a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, body finally relaxing for the first time in a long time. 

“Tell me about The Big Dipper,” Sam says, once Dean’s settled, his nose buried in Sam’s hair, tickling the nape of his neck. 

“Hmm. Well,” Dean whispers, tightening his hold around Sam’s waist. “A little bird once told me it’s a huge ladle.”

“Oh? What’s in it?”

“It’s sort of a soup kitchen for angels. Once a day, they all line up among the dimmer stars and get handouts of stardust and drink it down in big gulps to replenish their grace.”

“Is Cas there?”

“Damn right Cas is there,” Dean says, and Sam barely hears his voice crack. “He’s the one serving them, that self-sacrificial dumbass.”

Sam laughs, but it comes out in a half-sob. “What about Orion?” 

“Well, Orion _is_ a hunter, but what the history books fail to mention is that he hunts bunnies, shoots them with that arrow of his, wacks off their feet with his pocket knife and hangs ‘em off his belt.”

“Dean,” Sam says, sob-laughs turning to actual giggles. 

“What?”

“You’re so weird.”

“Shut up,” Dean admonishes him, smacking his stomach. “Anyway, did I ever tell you the story about Equuleus?”

“No,” Sam says, even though Dean has many times. “Tell me.”

“Well, Equuleus is _supposed_ to be a pony but _I_ think,” Dean starts, and Sam half-listens, lets his eyes slip shut and drifts to the soft sound of Dean’s voice and the comforting warmth of his arms. 

Sam is fading, nearly asleep, when Dean’s story ends, the sound of his voice growing even quieter. “Night, Sammy.”

Tomorrow, Sam knows Dean will argue with him again about continuing on, that he can’t see the point. But they will keep going because that’s who they are. At least, at the end of it all whenever that comes, there’s the comfort of knowing when they have no one else that they’ll have each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry for the pain. :)
> 
> Come yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/anastiels).


End file.
